[Preechr]

A Republican. This doesn't stain the party. The question is will the idea that Hastert could have done more to stop it affect the party in the elections, and I say no it won't... not at least near as much as were the Democrats allowed to manage the media cycle with whatever else they'd planned to put out there.

That we're still talking about Foley rather than some new scandal here on a Friday afternoon shows that this is still the headlining issue. Not Iraq. Not Iran. Not Afghanistan. No terror, just one more homo caught doing what most Americans believe all homos typically do: prey on our children. There will be no proof before the elections that Republicans did anything to hide anything... we'll have to wait on the investigations for any of that if it exists... So it's time to start a reform process and we can ring the All Clear bell in about a week or two. The Party of Family Values saves the day again!

The Foley scandal was ONLY ever an attempt by Democrats to manage the media cycle in their favor, just like the NIE thing from two weeks ago. They blew it. This was bad strategy, and they've given control of the media cycle over to the Republicans. As I said, Kev... MR. CAMPAIGN... The Rs set out to run on local issues this year, while the Ds planned to run on national issues. Had they waited to start Foley-gate for the first week in November, it would have really been more effective. Instead, they played it too early and lost probably two critical weeks of media attention that could have been more favorable for them had they spent this time letting failures in Iraq or pending war in Iran be the news, then throwing Foley on the fire at the last minute to show the party in power to be just a corrupt bunch of windbags that like to touch children innappropriately.

See, the war has no immediate end in sight, which makes it scary. Foley only lasted a week before it's started to, if not already turn in the Republicans favor, at least show signs of being neutralized and entirely spinnable. Foley is a nice smokescreen, because it puts national politics on Jerry Springer terms for the electorate. The problem highlighted by one dirty old bastard is at least something we can fix, and people vote for those that fix things. Had the Democrat strategy revolved more on highlighting the things it seems we might never fix, it would have been more effective... But , alas, they couldn't do that simply because THE DEMOCRATS HAVE NO PLAN FOR HOW TO FIX ANYTHING ANYMORE.

They've become the party of snot-nosed, bitchy, fingerpointing whiners that will seemingly complain about anything. There have been only a few issues they could have adopted in the last year to their benefit, and they've passed on every single one because they aren't interested in championing any progress, preferring instead to focus on tearing down and obstructing Republicans and any progress they might try to make.